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One key on North Eugene High School’s best piano was completely broken. The others were so worn out they required much effort to simply coax notes from them. The instrument looked just as tired from the outside.

The University of Oregon has selected Sabrina Madison-Cannon as the next dean of the School of Music and Dance.

Currently associate dean of academic and faculty affairs in the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, she will bring an extensive background in dance and advanced choreographic design to the role.

Associate professor of dance Brad Garner and his collaborators in Harmonic Laboratory have already established a reputation for staging spectacular shows that combine dance, music, digital media and science in creative and unexpected ways.

The collective of University of Oregon faculty and alumni incorporated seismic recordings from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano into the soundtrack for a performance called “Tremor.”

They turned an Xbox Kinect gaming sensor and a heart rate monitor into musical instruments for another entitled “Four Corners.”

The Eugene Weekly published a cover story on the local jazz scene, featuring interviews with associate professor of saxophone and jazz studies Idit Shner, senior instructor of jazz history Carl Woideck and jazz program alum Torrey Newhart. Read the entire article here.

“When people think gospel music, a lot of people think South. You know, or the East Coast,” says Andiel Brown, the director of gospel ensembles at the University of Oregon. “But gospel music is universal.”

When he first arrived at the university as a freshman, Brown wasn’t thinking of a career in music. He was a psychology major who walked onto the football team.

Assistant professor of voice Craig Phillips was watching a documentary about the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” when he had a lightbulb moment of his own.

Through the international exchange of School of Music and Dance faculty members, students, and alumni, the UO is creating a deeper connection with communities on the continent of humanity’s birth.
The School of Music and Dance is at the forefront of demonstrating how music unites people the world over, from the 42nd parallel to the equator.

These days, alumnus Edgardo Simone, BMus ’82, MMus ’83, is a composer and a successful orchestrator of Hollywood blockbusters, but the path Simone followed to the UO from his rough-and-tumble childhood was anything but smooth—but it was certainly cinematic

After winning the 2015 Graduate Emerging Artist Award of the Department of Dance and graduating with her MFA from the UO in 2015, Katie Scherman has continued her work as an independent choreographer and dancer with BodyVox in Portland.